|
Preparing Students for Online Communication
| Before your classroom goes online and begins communicating
with peers around the world, you may want to spend time
with your students reflecting on some of the issues that may arise
during their online collaboration. |
You might want to spend some time talking about appropriate
use of online forums. An iEARN school, Edmonds Cyberschool,
created an "iEARN
Buddy Support Contract"  to
help students in writing and posting their messages on iEARN forums.
In addition, it can be helpful to communicate to parents
that you will be involving your students in global collaboration
with peers worldwide. This can take many forms, from phone
calls to letters or, in some cases, permission slips to
request that they agree to this use of interactive technologies.
We suggest that you also communicate your plans to your local administration
so that you can create a local base of support and awareness of
this innovative work. Margaret Riel's Learning Circles Teachers
Guide provides helpful models on how to utilize these various
channels of communication with your local parental and school
communities, including students themselves (Letters
to Parents and Students).
Sample Internet Technology in the Classroom
Permission Slip
In our classroom, we are using Internet technologies to support
our curricular learning, including opportunities for e-mail,
website publishing, video production and videoconferencing,
to learn and connect with schools in the U.S. and around
the world through the International Education and Resource
Network (iEARN).
Within these opportunities, please consider the following
permission for your child to communicate his/her writing
and artwork, including digital
images and online video.
My child has permission to:
__ Write and read curricular topic e-mail messages with students
and teachers in schools around the world with whom we are
doing curricular projects.
__ Have his/her curricular topic artwork on a classroom website
and on iEARN's website.
__ Have his/her digital images in curricular project activities
on a classroom website and on iEARN's website.
__ Have his/her image in curricular project videos shared
with other schools in iEARN, on the classroom website and
on iEARN's website.
Student Name: _______________________
Parent Name & Signature: ______________
Date: _________________ |
The activities below are readable through the Adobe Acrobat Reader
(free download).
• Telecommunicating telecommunicating-activity.pdf
 -
Students will communicate with one another without seeing or hearing
each other, simulating communication via e-mail. Students will
then reflect on the experience and think about potential miscommunication
via e-mail.
• Introducing your classroom to the iEARN Community
welcome letter.pdf
Constructing a welcome letter to introduce your classroom
and project ideas to the iEARN community.
top
|
Home